Unseen Forces
Thanks to classic animated movies, some of the most charismatic figures in Hollywood became more widely known by their voice than their appearance. No lights or cameras were needed, but these vocal legends lent as much to the action as any recognisable A-lister, writes NICK SCOTT.
If I’m being profligate with life’s limited supply of superlatives by proclaiming this, so be it: Disney’s 1967 interpretation of The Jungle Book is undoubtedly the most uplifting animated movie of all time. Seventy-eight minutes of nectareous anthropomorphism, taking the viewer on a vicarious journey along the gamut of human emotions towards a bittersweet denouement, it was a panacea during this writer’s post-adolescent college years for what Churchill called his ‘black dog’.
Yet it was nearly a very different movie. Early versions of both the script and the musical score had far more in common with the Rudyard Kipling novel on which the film is based — a rather foreboding story of abandonment and alienation tinged with violence, moral ambiguity and austere Victorian-era didacticism. Walt Disney, who died early on in the production process, wanted things lightened up, and even replaced writer Bill Peet and songwriter Terry Gilkyson in pursuit of a more family friendly picture. But the dash of effervescence the film needed, to fulfil Disney’s vision, came with the casting of the bandleader, entertainer and singer Phil Harris in the role of Baloo.
“Walt knew him socially,” Richard M. Sherman, who took on those songwriting duties, later explained. “Phil Harris was married to Alice Faye, and they used to go to parties. One day Walt said, ‘I want him to be Baloo’, and this was a shocking thing. Phil Harris! A Dixieland jazz musician, you know, wisecracking guy, the sidekick of Jack Benny — how could he be a Kipling character?”
Early in his involvement, Harris asked director Wolfgang Reitherman and the rest of the production team if he could inject a little spontaneity into the project — to do things his own way, improvise lines of his own, and flavour the role with the big-band showman’s charm with which he was so lavishly imbued. Granted his wish, Harris’s natural charisma, comic timing and inspired ad- libbing seemed to call the shots — so much so, animators Frank Thomas and Ollie Johnston even tweaked Baloo’s physical animation to match Harris’s vocal inflections, confections and overall personality.
The man born Wonga Philip Harris in 1904 in Indiana — the curious first name means ‘messenger of fleet’ in Cherokee, and was a legacy of his parents’ friendships with native Americans — went on to apply his sonorous, honeyed tones to other animated roles: notably Thomas O’Malley in 1970’s The Aristocats and Little John in Disney’s 1973 animated musical adaptation of Robin Hood (the latter essentially a reprisal of his Baloo role). Always studiously attired, Harris had been in showbiz since the age of 12, drumming for his circus bandleader father, but his roguish wit and southern swagger really came to America’s attention via his role as bandleader on radio shows The Jack Benny Program, as alluded to by Sherman, and then The Phil Harris-Alice Faye Show with Harris’s aforementioned wife. The extent to which Harris’s hedonism and penchant for off- screen bourbon was a comic fabrication was a secret he took to his grave (“I can’t die until the government finds a safe place to bury my liver,” he once quipped), but what’s certain is — despite being virtually unrecognisable, visually speaking, even to dedicated movie scholars — his mark on the movie canon is indelible.
Meanwhile, credit is also due elsewhere for how well Harris’s mellifluous southern drawl worked when it came to the voicing of Baloo. He had a foil in the form of Sebastian Cabot, voicing Mowgli’s more prudish but equally rakish (in his own way) guardian and protector, Bagheera. The dynamic contrast provided by Cabot’s refined, stern tone — given a huge tinge of pecksniffian haughtiness (to the ears of American audiences) by his British military accent — is a crucial part of the film’s aural landscape.
